‘Why did they hate us?’:
the bottomless academic pyramid and decolonial feminist perspectives for change in higher education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/dl.v33i.137239Keywords:
Bottomless academic pyramid, International system of higher Education, Carolina Maria de Jesus/Bitita, Latin American antiracist theory, Decolonial Feminism, Academic arrogance and extractivismAbstract
This paper historicises the concept of ‘bottomless academic pyramid’ (pirámides academicas sin base) from its origins in Latin American anthropology in the 1960s to its current use by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui to criticise the international system of power in higher education. Examining this theoretical legacy aims to foreground ongoing inequalities against the ‘predominated’, that is, people whose access to formal education is hindered by race, class, and gender. It touches on the epistemological injustice of being Othered by universities in reading the memories of Carolina Maria de Jesus. The discussion aspires to highlight the academic project’s tensions as problematised by contemporary decolonial feminisms from Latin America.
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